When Patrick Coffey took over the boys track program in 2014, he knew Merrillville had the athletes to field a winner.
He just had to convince them to come out for track.
“One of the big things I wanted to do was start recruiting other sports,” he said. “Your best athletes in the school can all combine into one program. And that’s usually track.”
Coffey, the 2018 Post-Tribune Boys Track Coach of the Year, built his program’s depth by turning football, basketball, soccer and other athletes into multisport participants.
This spring, the Pirates won their first regional title in track since 2008.
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Coffey, a 2006 Crown Point graduate who later ran track at Carthage in Wisconsin, reached out to football coach Zac Wells soon after being hired.
“I started collaborating with Wells in the weight room,” Coffey said. “Every winter, we do all our conditioning together. We’ll have the football and track teams in there together in the weight room.”
That’s continued with current football coach Brad Seiss and spread to other sports at Merrillville. And it’s not just football, either.
Coffey has added coaches from the basketball, football and soccer programs to his coaching staff and coordinated workouts with those teams as well.
“We’re all on the same page, trying to promote multisport athletes,” Coffey said. “We do a good job here of collaborating. That’s helped tremendously with creating the depth we want.”
The extra participants in these workouts have increased the quality, said assistant coach Anthony Curry, who’s also an assistant in football.
“They compete in the weight room and they compete on the track,” Curry said. “It’s making everyone better, making everyone improve daily. If people want to keep their spots, they have to keep working hard every day.”
Senior Xavier Griffin, who finished eighth in the 300 hurdles at the state meet, was one of the athletes who benefited from the combined workouts.
Griffin said he entered high school with no intentions of running track, but ended up as an all-state hurdler.
“Everyone recommended it to me,” he said. “It seemed fun and I wanted to get faster, so I came out for track.”
Coffey said that of the 60 athletes in the track program, fewer than 10 focused exclusively on one sport.
Their competitive side emerged again when Merrillville finished as runner-up to Crown Point at the Duneland Athletic Conference Meet after going undefeated in the regular season.
The Pirates rebounded to win sectional and regional titles.
“How they reacted to losing at conference, that’s when I realized this was a special group,” Coffey said. “No one pointed fingers. They just kept working. They took ownership.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.